Saturday's Buycott at Whole Foods in La Jolla

Wayne and I met up with Dean, Paul and Deb, on Saturday to join in the Whole Foods buycott (link to W.C. Varones blog). Temple of Mut has a nice recap here. I hope W.C. won't mind, I am lifting the picture he took of me.


It gave us a chance to meet like minded folks and an excuse to buy some new chocolate. Prior to going in to Whole Foods, we had a chance to engage with Margie (sp?) who was demonstrating for single payer health care at the corner of Nobel and the entrance to the shopping center. I asked Margie about her positions. Her most compelling argument has to do with those who can not obtain reasonably priced health insurance. Even if we discount illegal aliens and those who choose to go without coverage, we still have about a hard core of 10-15 million in this category. In a street corner discussion, it is hard to craft an easy answer to dealing with that issue. My response was to say that I wondered why we had to change everyone else's plans for the sake of those who don't have insurance; surely it would be better to just provide them a subsidy to buy insurance. A more nuanced answer that I did not make is that the current system is driven by so much government mandate that it is not affordable.

I want to add that Margie was a delight to talk to, she is the lady with curly gray hair in the linked photo. She made her points respectfully and listened respectfully and I feel as though I understand where she is coming from. A long-haired, bearded fellow protester was not so pleasant. He challenged my most banal assertion, that the bill of rights regulates government not private parties and because he was such a buttinsky, I left to go inside and do some shopping.

The point I made that seemed to resonate with Margie is as follows. I started talking about how in Roe vs Wade, the Supreme Court had found a right of privacy between the doctor and woman seeking an abortion. The court said that the government has no business interfering with that private discussion. So I ask, under single payer, the government, if I got prostate cancer, there are numerous treatment options, correct? But the President has said that he wants to limit treatment options to save money. So now, the government is interfering in that private health discussion between me and my doctor. Margie seemed to agree that even under single payer, the government shouldn't dictate treatment.

I recommend this line of argument when dealing with the left on this issue, because it puts their cherished principles embodied in Roe v Wade on the line against government control of health care decisions.

Anyway, the shopping was great. Wayne like his meal of seafood salad, sushi and banana nectar.



It was good to meet Sarah Bond and all the other bloggers and Tea Party supporters. I hope we do something like that again.

The chocolate? Chocolats Valrhona large milk chocolate bar.

Here is a snippet of video of the protesters as we drove in. Mr. Buttinsky is not pictured, in case you were wondering. Video courtesy of Wayne, official TLT videographer and artiste.

More on Whole Foods and Engaging the Left

Some of you may wonder why I keep tabs on DailyKos and occasional other leftist type blogs. You may be surprised that it is not so much to see what they are up to, as to understand what type of arguments might get them to rethink their positions. Further, my libertarian leanings sometimes offer some common ground on which to launch a discussion.

A recent example was a recent DailyKos diary about Afghanistan that I found hard to understand the point. But a commenter made the point that the cost of war there would "break us." While I think that is hyperbole given Obama's 9 trillion, 10 trillion, heck it's only zeroes, deficits. But I do believe that the Vietnam War helped fuel inflation in the 70s and that the Iraq War has had negative economic consequences. So I commented that:

The stagflation of the 70s can be directly traced to the deficits we piled up fighting the Vietnam war. There is no doubt in my mind that the huge spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to our current economic mess.

This comment receive three positive ratings. But note that I have taken their reflexive anti-war attitude and introduced the concept that deficits hurt the economy. I'm not explicitly exploiting the opening, just prepping the battle space.



I recently received an email from a left of center blogger, Simon Owens, pictured, who thought my readers would be interested in how the left used social media to rally against Whole Foods. Please read his piece for yourself. Simon is a self styled media critic, but I note that he utterly uncritical and provides no counter point to the boycott organizers' perspective. Two quotes:

“[The op-ed] lit a fire under me,” Rosenthal said. “This person was using his company as a sort of Trojan horse for a bunch of discredited, bad ideas that we have said no to over and over again.

They’ve begun posting user-submitted photos from people who are taking pictures of receipts from other grocery stores they’re shopping at and on the blog they’re listing boycott events that are taking place around the country. But they’re doing very little to actually organize these individual events.

I noted in a previous post, I quoted a DailyKos piece as to how some on the left itself realize how fickle they themselves are. If you read Simon's post, you will see that even this initial modest success lacked much energy. To quote KT from the comments:

In any case, the guy's post boils down into this: "We're a bunch of children."

But I still seek to persuade, because it keeps me sane thinking that ultimately not everyone on the left is insane.

Impact of Whole Foods Boycott

In a previous post I discussed my belief that the lefty boycott of Whole Foods would fail "because recycled organic self-righteousness has its economic limits." Apparently, some diarists over at DailyKos (the Great Orange to the insiders there) have the same complaint about themselves. Although the Whole Foods boycott is not specifically called out, here is what diarist The Sinastral (no I didn't make that up) has to say about the left in his ironically titled diary "We're Incompetent and Here's How We'll Win"

We’re wishy-washy. We’re opportunists without discipline. With the exception of some outstanding progressive heroes like nyceve, the majority of us are reactionaries. One of the reasons so few people outside the Great Orange take us seriously is that we undermine ourselves with our own inconsistency. It’s a word that I’m going to hit again and again here.

We’ve given our money. We’ve given our time. We’ve organized ourselves surprisingly well for such a populous movement. We have a fundraising arm. We have an annual conference. We have our own polls. We have Kos TV and Congress Matters. We have plenty of leaders in our ranks who work tirelessly on our behalf. It’s not that we’re not passionate. We are everything we need to win...except...we are not consistent. Our threats carry no weight because our opinions will change tomorrow. Our lobbying gains little momentum because our attention is always flitting away to the newest shiny object. Our righteous indignation has limited motivational powers because we never stick to a campaign. Remember The Path to 9/11? Most of us decided that it just wasn’t convenient enough to carry on that boycott, given that Disney is everywhere we look. And forget about the excuses we concoct to shop at Wal-Mart; most of us are of the opinion that boycotting them would be like boycotting the sun. Our resignation bolsters the very power we so despise in them. But, hey. They’re nearby, and they’re the only store around—having driven the competition out of business, of course.

Brought to you by B-Daddy: "Reading DailyKos so you won't have to."

Meanwhile, the impact of the boycott is yet to be felt (scroll down to 8th paragraph in the NYT article). More tellingly, stock picking technical analyst Zachary Scheidt doesn't even mention the boycott when analyzing the current stock price. (he says sell, because the pendulum has swung too far to optimism for WFMI.)

Finally, my search for pictures of the energized activists protesting whole foods yielded this one image.

John Mackey is my Hero - UDPATE

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has created quite an uproar on the left with an editorial he wrote that was edited and published by the Wall Street Journal. He has been vilified and personally attacked by the left since his call for for free market reforms of health care, but what else would you expect from the left except the politics of personal destruction (see rule 12).

For those of you not familiar with Whole Foods, it operates a chain of natural and organic foods supermarkets. As you might guess the stereotypical shopper is an urban lefty who assuages his or her guilt over participating in industrial society by buying organic. From a DailyKook article:

A lot of progressives, vegetarians, professional and amateur athletes, and others who care so much about the environment and what they eat that they’re still willing to shell out three bucks for an organic orange, even in the midst of the worst recession in sixty years.

As you might imagine, these lefty types think that the power of their indignation will drive Whole Foods to either get Mackey to change his position or the board to fire him as CEO. Fat chance.

Here is a summary of what he said, which is as good a summary of the free market position on health care as I have seen. I am nominating for inclusion in the Freedom Coalition Agenda as our Health Care Plank:

1. "Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts."
2. "Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits."
3. Allow competition across state lines.
   
4. "Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover."
5. "Enact tort reform."
6. "Make costs transparent."
   
7. "Enact medicare reform."
8. Revise tax law to make it easier to donate to those without insurance.

So now that the left is calling for a boycott, I would love to see its long term effect. My bold prediction is that nothing will come of this, because recycled organic self-righteousness has its economic limits. The lefties and others may stay away for a short while, but will come back because Mr. Mackey provides them the product they want at competitive price.

I think the leftists know this in their hearts. This is why they love government and hate capitalism. They know they can't even themselves resist the allure of better products at lower prices, but it runs counter to their desire to tell everyone else what's good for them (like eating your organic veggies.) So they want government to protect them from their own choices and in the process they hamstring the choices of others.

UPDATE

I couldn't resist checking out one of the calls for a Whole Foods boycott at DailyKooks. I also couldn't resist leaving this comment:

Some people have suggested shopping at Trader Joe's, but don't they carry Israeli products? Wouldn't that contribute to Palestinian oppression? Another alternative is Henry's, but they are always being picketed by the Grocer's union. This makes it really difficult to eat with a clear social conscience. I'd plant a garden in my back yard for fresh vegetables, but my landscaping service would charge me too much extra and I can barely communicate with their employees. I am afraid they'd ruin a vegetable garden. Any suggestions?